Olympics|Want an All-Access Pass to the Rio Olympics? Being Royalty Helps.

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Want an All-Access Pass to the Rio Olympics? Being Royalty Helps.

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Prince Tunku Imran of Malaysia received extensive access to the Games, which in Rio includes an assigned car and driver, once he was elected to the International Olympic Committee in 2006.CreditCreditJames Hill for The New York Times

RIO DE JANEIRO — His Royal Highness Tunku Imran of Malaysia was sitting in the media center at the badminton arena recently, holding his Olympic credential with both hands. To untrained eyes, it looked like little more than a piece of laminated paper. But the prince’s eyes are anything but untrained.

“Accreditation is everything at the Olympics,” he said, “and this is the best one.”

So, it’s as good as gold here?

“No,” he said, offering a polite correction. “It’s platinum.”

Long before the opening ceremony, a very different Olympic competition had already unfolded. It was a contest for access, privilege and prestige, and the results hang like a plastic medal around the necks of thousands of participants here, everyone from athletes and coaches to reporters and a wide array of officials.

These credentials are much more than a ticket to an event. These are passes to restricted areas, which might include special seats, better transportation and even entry to the Olympic Village, where athletes are housed.

“Literally, he can go anywhere he wants,” said Dato’ Low Beng Choo, a Malaysian Olympic official who was sitting next to the prince.

For the vast majority of people, credentials at the Games are simply a way to get to places you need to be — the volleyball venue, in the case of a volleyball player, or the press center, in the case of a broadcast journalist. For a rarefied group, though, credentials are where the Olympics become a little bit like the military and a little bit like high school. They reflect status, in gradations too numerous to count.

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The Olympic credential of Prince Tunku Imran of Malaysia.CreditDavid Segal/The New York Times

A combination of symbols, numbers, letters and colors reveal your station, which you need a code breaker to explain. A “2,” for instance, provides access to locker rooms. An “R” is a pass to what is officially called the Olympic Village Residential Zone. If your numbers and letters are set against a blue background, you can walk the sideline of a basketball game or any other event. A fork and knife emblem means you can eat at the dining hall in the athletes’ village. Some people have an additional “Upgrade” card, which is under their credential and confers a specific added something.

At the top of this pyramid is a group known as the “Olympic Family,” which is not, as it may sound, the relatives of athletes. Rather, it is the members of the various committees and associations that plan, organize and orchestrate the Games.

Members of the Olympic Family have separate entrances to events, as well as their own Olympic Family Lounges, which are cordoned-off dens scattered around the Games. Those with the proper mark on their credential — “6,” as it happens — can avail themselves of food and comfy sofas.

Even within the Olympic Family there are different levels of eminence. Bestriding them all are the roughly 100 members of the International Olympic Committee. Yes, one of them was arrested Wednesday for purportedly selling a few million dollars’ worth of event tickets. But for now, and long after that scandal subsides, I.O.C. members are the pashas of the Games. Their perks include the little-known Olympic Club, which, Prince Imran said, is near the swimming venue.

“They give you a gold card, and you can go anytime you like,” he said. “You also get two guest passes. Which means you can bring two guests, once. I’ve already used my two guest passes, for my wife and my son. But you can make an application to the I.O.C. and request more.”

Reviews of the club are mixed. Karl Stoss, an Austrian casino and lottery executive who was elected to the I.O.C. while in Rio, was underwhelmed.

“No atmosphere,” he said. “It’s like an airport lounge, but less crowded.”

“We stayed for about 20 minutes and left,” said his friend Peter Mennel, who runs Austria’s National Olympic Committee, making him gold-card eligible.

The ultimate I.O.C. perk — at least theoretically — is an assigned car and driver. (“T1” on the credential.) This is a slight upgrade from “T3,” which is the right to hop into any car in a fleet ready to chauffeur eligible riders. Each car comes with an O.F.A., an Olympic family assistant, who is supposed to help with interpreting.

T1 and T3 cars can drive on recently opened highways and roads, more than 150 miles of pavement that were poured for the Games. They will have an afterlife for residents of Rio, but for now, these are just for properly credentialed cars and buses.

This has infuriated locals, who have been forced to cope with worse-than-usual traffic snarls. But remarkably, the system does not seem to have eased much of the friction for its beneficiaries.

Prince Imran, for instance, said that his T1 driver had gotten so lost on his way to the women’s rugby sevens final that he caught only the last few minutes of the game. For the men’s final, he tried a minibus, though he had an equally truncated experience.

“Both times, the drivers were unable to find the stadium,” he said. “A lot of the roads are new, so Google Maps often doesn’t help. And they need better signage, though I think some of the drivers don’t read the signs. So it’s been a challenge. I think the Brazilians are doing their best. Maybe not enough training, you know.”

The patrician scent wafting from this barely visible dimension of the Games has its origins in the man who all but created the modern Olympics.

“If we step back, the Games were founded by a plucky aristocrat named Pierre de Coubertin, and he assembled dukes and princes to form the International Olympic Committee,” said Jules Boykoff, author of “Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics.” “The movement has its roots in power and privilege. It has changed mightily over the years and 1981 admitted the first woman into this boys’ club. But it still has an inordinate amount of sheikhs and princes.”

Prince Imran, 68, who is royalty in Negeri Sembilan, one of Malaysia’s 13 states, speaks with a British accent, most likely a holdover from his high school and college education in England. He has attended every summer Olympics since 1988, though it took until he was elected to the I.O.C. in 2006, after years of lower-level positions in the administrative infrastructure of the Games, to be given the straight flush he now wears around his neck.

Along with all of these benefits come obligations. Many of the medals are awarded by I.O.C. members, and the prince was scheduled for a ceremony later that day at the velodrome, home of the cycling events.

“I’ve done two, and I’m scheduled to do two more,” he said. “It’s an honor for your country.”

Then there is the hobnobbing. The 2012 Olympics were called “a gigantic schmoozathon” by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London at the time. For someone like Prince Imran, the Games are a tightly packed schedule of very good meals. There is no mark on his credential for this particular upside. It just comes with the job — like it or not.

“Tonight we have dinner at the China House,” he said, referring to the Olympic hosting venue built by the Chinese. “The invite came last week, and they asked, Which night would you like to come? That’s almost cornering us.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section SP, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: This Paper Key Fits Every Olympic Lock. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe